Learning Generative AI Tools for Excel

Chapter 5. Getting Started with Copilot

One morning, after breakfast, my children and I gathered a few leftover cookie crumbs and brought them out to the garden, near a spot where we had often seen ants passing by. We placed the crumbs down one at a time, deliberately, curious to see what would happen. Within minutes, the first ants began to appear. Quietly and methodically, each one took on a task: some collected, others carried, and a few seemed to organize the flow. Not a single crumb was wasted. In no time, everything had been neatly picked up and taken away, with remarkable precision. That simple moment reminded me of how Copilot in Excel works. It doesn’t require a grand gesture or a perfect setup. Instead, it responds best when you offer it a little at a time. A question. A column. A hint of what you’re trying to achieve. You don’t need to know everything up front: you just need to start.

Copilot gathers the pieces you provide, connects them, analyzes them, and builds valuable insights, step-by-step. One crumb at a time, it helps sort, visualize, and make sense of data. It doesn’t replace your judgment, but it frees you from repetitive tasks so you can focus on what matters most: understanding and decision-making.

In this chapter, we’ll explore how to get started with Copilot in Excel, from enabling it in your environment to using its first key features for creating, editing, and understanding your data in an intuitive and guided way. To begin, you don’t need much, just ...